4 ms·

Here's what they are doing, from the linked blog post: > Our dev teams had taken to working with candidates to solve a bug or feature as part of the interview

by whack 8y ago

Here's what they are doing, from the linked blog post: > Our dev teams had taken to working with candidates to solve a bug or feature as part of the interview process. It was a collaborative effort with the candidate and the team working together to solve a real problem. Sounds like a great idea. Except it's so variable. What if you get lucky and you get a easy bug, whereas someone else gets something much harder. Let's standardize that by giving everyone the same task to work on. And what if we want to hire people who aren't fluent in your project's programming language? That would be a big handicap for them. Let's deal with that by having minimally sized "projects" in all the languages, and allowing the candidate to choose their preferred language. And we don't want the interviews to be biased against people who don't already have domain knowledge in a specific field. So let's make the task generic enough to be approachable by any good programmer. Congrats, if you did all of the above, you've reinvented leetcode style interviews. There's some cool stuff that MS has put into practice. I like the focus on reading/understanding existing code, instead of just writing code. I also like the relaxed pacing and "open book" approach. But for the most part, I don't think this is really as revolutionary as people think it is.

lazyasciiart 8y ago
Even just having the interviewer pair with the candidate on random leetcode problems would be pretty revolutionary.
- DerpyBaby123 8y ago
  Why do you think so? I know many companies that pair for interviews, Thoughtworks, and Pivotal Labs for example
  - lazyasciiart 8y ago
    I know those two, but they’re definitely outliers in many ways. I’ve never seen it done for a non-consulting company.
avisser 8y ago
> taken to working with candidates to solve a bug or feature as part of the interview process This is unethical. How is this anything other than unpaid labor?
- TheSoftwareGuy 8y ago
  A little bit of unpaid labor is honestly fine. Especially since I can’t imagine this being easy to exploit in a way that really impacts a company’s bottom line. It’s like getting a free sample of food at the store, before committing to a full purchase
  - bicubic 8y ago
    Imagine being a carpenter applying for a job and being asked to make a small bedside table for free. So the employer can sample your skills before committing to a full purchase. Absurd.
    - simonswords82 8y ago
      If you ever sat on the hiring side and had just one new hire not work out, you would understand your throw away statement is actually more absurd than asking for free work. Let's flip the scenario and go your way instead... Imagine being a programmer applying for a job and not being asked to demonstrate your skills at interview. The interview goes well, and you're offered the job. You give your 4 weeks notice on your existing job, and turn up to your new role. You sit down, it's day one, and you're presented with a small sprint of bugs to work through to get warmed up on the project you're assigned. Your heart sinks. You realise that you are totally out of your depth. The solution you're working on is hard, the documentation insanely complex, and you feel more and more despondent as the week goes on. By the end of the week your colleagues and managers have started to pick up on your struggles. Despite their effort to help you can't make meaningful progress. To cut a long story short you're let go, and now you're unemployed. -THE END- As an employer and owner of a software company, it's my job to assess the skills of somebody as quickly and efficiently as possible. If getting them to "build a small bedside table for free" gets both me, my colleagues, and the candidate attending the interview comfortable that we're offering a job to somebody who can succeed at my company, then so be it.
tills13 8y ago
It's less about solving the issue and more about how you approach it.
rvp-x 8y ago
Why is being biased in favour someone with domain knowledge a bad thing? I assume that is the domain you are hiring them to do.

by whack 8y ago

lazyasciiart 8y ago

Even just having the interviewer pair with the candidate on random leetcode problems would be pretty revolutionary.

DerpyBaby123 8y ago
Why do you think so? I know many companies that pair for interviews, Thoughtworks, and Pivotal Labs for example
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  I know those two, but they’re definitely outliers in many ways. I’ve never seen it done for a non-consulting company.

avisser 8y ago

> taken to working with candidates to solve a bug or feature as part of the interview process This is unethical. How is this anything other than unpaid labor?

TheSoftwareGuy 8y ago
A little bit of unpaid labor is honestly fine. Especially since I can’t imagine this being easy to exploit in a way that really impacts a company’s bottom line. It’s like getting a free sample of food at the store, before committing to a full purchase
- bicubic 8y ago
  Imagine being a carpenter applying for a job and being asked to make a small bedside table for free. So the employer can sample your skills before committing to a full purchase. Absurd.
  - simonswords82 8y ago
    If you ever sat on the hiring side and had just one new hire not work out, you would understand your throw away statement is actually more absurd than asking for free work. Let's flip the scenario and go your way instead... Imagine being a programmer applying for a job and not being asked to demonstrate your skills at interview. The interview goes well, and you're offered the job. You give your 4 weeks notice on your existing job, and turn up to your new role. You sit down, it's day one, and you're presented with a small sprint of bugs to work through to get warmed up on the project you're assigned. Your heart sinks. You realise that you are totally out of your depth. The solution you're working on is hard, the documentation insanely complex, and you feel more and more despondent as the week goes on. By the end of the week your colleagues and managers have started to pick up on your struggles. Despite their effort to help you can't make meaningful progress. To cut a long story short you're let go, and now you're unemployed. -THE END- As an employer and owner of a software company, it's my job to assess the skills of somebody as quickly and efficiently as possible. If getting them to "build a small bedside table for free" gets both me, my colleagues, and the candidate attending the interview comfortable that we're offering a job to somebody who can succeed at my company, then so be it.

tills13 8y ago

It's less about solving the issue and more about how you approach it.

rvp-x 8y ago

Why is being biased in favour someone with domain knowledge a bad thing? I assume that is the domain you are hiring them to do.